Gold Dig #23

Coni’Seafood is in the middle of nowhere Inglewood. It has a tiny 4-car parking lot that you have to back up into the street to exit. But it’s often on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list, so we trekked to Inglewood to try it. It was worth the effort. The back patio is surprisingly pleasant, lined with potted palm trees. There are heat lamps for cool evenings, fans in the patio roof for warm afternoons, and high tables around the edges where you can sit in the sunlight and have a cold beer. Actually, I am not a huge beer drinker and was really excited to enjoy a nice pitcher of sangria, but it turns out the sangria on their menu is a non-alcoholic soda – bummer!

The Dish

People are going to Coni’Seafood to get the Pescado Zarandeado (aka grilled snook).

Warning: Come hungry, or with a group who wants to share! The Pescado Zarandeado varies in size depending on what fish they have that day (great to know it’s fresh!), but typically you can’t get anything smaller than 1 kilo (that’s 2.2 lbs!). The day we went, the waitress told us the smallest fish they had left was 3 kilos, which would have been overkill for 2 people. Luckily she came back and said they had a 2 kilo fish. Still massive, but more manageable. The first time round it did, however, prevent us from trying any of the shrimp dishes that are also supposed to be quite good. So we recruited some friends and went back!

Pescado Zarandeado

The main attraction was definitely the Pescado Zarandeado. It’s brushed with a slightly sweet salty “house sauce”, in which rumors indicate mayo may play a big part of the yum factor. It was perfectly cooked so it was moist and separated easily from the skin. It comes with tortillas and a dish of sauteed onions that seem to be soaked in some kind of salty drippings, but was so tasty that I preferred to just go to town on the fish by itself. Needless to say, there were leftovers. The tortillas and sauteed onion came in handy for that, as fish can tend to lose some of its flavorful goodness as leftovers, but was serviceable made into fish tacos.

Second Warning: The Pescado Zarandeado takes 30 minutes to prepare, so be ready to chill with your beer and maybe some ceviche.

Ceviche Marinero

While we waited for our fish, we got the Ceviche Marinero to munch on. The menu describes it as shrimp marinated with lemon, cucumber, cilantro, tomato, onion, and black sauce (not sure what “black sauce” is, but it was tasty!). It also has mango, which the waitress told us about – I don’t know why they don’t call that out on the menu. This dish also came in a group-sized portion, so we had to pace ourselves for the fish.

Camarones Cucaracha

On our return trip with a larger group in tow, we were able to try a couple of the shrimp dishes. The Camarones Cucaracha are whole fried shrimp. You eat them head, tail, and all. Growing up in an Asian household, this dish seemed perfectly normal to me. Not so much for some of my lunchmates. But to their credit, they bravely dove in, and by the end of the meal were happily munching away on what they fondly called the “little monsters”. These were eerily similar to the Asian version of whole fried shrimp.

Camarones Culichis

We also got shrimp with jalapeno, cheese, and sour cream. The creamy sauce had just a touch of spice, and made me wish that they served it with a more generous side of rice. By the end I was basically spooning the sauce straight into my mouth. It reminded me of the Spanish meets Asian flavors of Peruvian food. The Camarones Culichis was definitely my runner-up dish after the Pescado Zarandeado.